BY GUEST AUTHOR, RAMOLA D (bio below)

Karen Stewart, with companion and protector, Mariska, the Anatolian Shepherd

In Karen’s own words: Born in the late 1950s, to an Air Force Officer and his wife. We lived all over the country and in Germany during his career. I had an interest in foreign languages and art, so I got the equivalent of a double major at FSU in German and Fine Art. When I graduated college I applied to the National Security Agency to work as a linguist (translate and report foreign material of interest to the government), and after a stringent background check, was hired in 1982 by NSA. I lived in Columbia, Maryland with my husband. I worked at NSA until 2010 when I was railroaded out of NSA just two years before I could retire because I had dared ask the Inspector General to investigate a matter involving work credit and promotion theft. I moved to Florida in 2011 to get away and wait for the lawsuit (appeal to forbidden retaliatory firing) to be adjudicated by the Judge Lawrence Gallagher at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in Baltimore.

Ramola D: Thanks so much for agreeing to do this interview. I have been reading scripts of your Renew America interviews and have listened to your conversations on Wheel of Freedom and Boiling Frogs Post with much interest.

To encapsulate somewhat, it sounds like a complaint process you began internally with the NSA Inspector General about an Intelligence report you had authored but wasn’t credited for led to all sorts of repercussions—threats to give you an unfavorable psychological evaluation contrary to routine periodic psychological test results, being cheated out of a double promotion, being transferred to a menial job to punish you for pursuing an IG complaint, then termination, and NSA Security then stalking you, surveilling you, harassing you. Was that how it started?